


Days with you never fade

by ShaelinFloats



Category: Formula 1 RPF, Motorsport RPF
Genre: A bit sad, But Sweet, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-30 05:09:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21422704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShaelinFloats/pseuds/ShaelinFloats
Summary: Pierre pursed his lips. His eyes were watering again.“My brain is going blind.”
Relationships: Pierre Gasly/Charles Leclerc
Comments: 8
Kudos: 45





	Days with you never fade

Imagine if...  
  


It’s a cold night at the end of December. Charles sits by the kitchen table and his only companion is a sliver of moonlight spilling into the room, over the table, casts enough silvery hues for things to pop out in the shadowy darkness around him. Everything feels and looks like an old French thriller: Colorless, grainy, soundless, chilling and stale. A pair of scissors sits steadily in his hand, but he’s hesitating again. There’s him and there’s the moon. No one else, yet he hesitates.   
His boyfriend Pierre is asleep, can’t tell his arm isn’t holding him anymore, hopefully won’t notice he left the room. Pierre’s insomnia is much worse. It took four sleeping pills tonight before he finally blacked out. This means he probably won’t be in shape to go with him and experience the annual Christmas event downtown in the morning like most other years. It is what is. Those are the alternatives. Pierre can stay off them for his sake, but then he will get sicker. That plus the cocktail of pills going into his mouth daily makes him drowsy. He’s like a half-knocked out space cadet slowly drifting away into another dimension and soon their voices won’t reach other no more. Soon. Maybe in a month. Maybe next year. No one can tell for sure when he goes entirely into static. 

Pierre is a phrase in a song lyric. _Who would've thought that a boy like me could come to this? _He’s the line everyone is dreading for, played on medium volume. The words about sorrow and heaven that you sit through in tears when it’s all over and the coffin is covered in meters of dirt and the apartment becomes lifeless and you can’t find any spot that doesn’t remind you of your time together. The last song on a CD with the sad violin piece that no one can crack a smile at. That’s Pierre.   
Maybe there’ll be a new treatment to try out in the future, doctors won’t pull down the darkest blinds, because the movie is still running. They must travel down this path either way, Charles always one step ahead because they rely on his stability. He’s Pierre’s most trustful source of hope and devotion. If he fades, Pierre will fade faster. But lately Charles has been feeling weaker and more defenseless and succumbs to sorrow and hopelessness more easily when he’s alone instead of fighting and resisting. It keeps him awake in the nights and he grieves over a life that should’ve turned out a golden success. He can’t help himself. He feels sorry for all that Pierre won and then lost on his way to here. He feels disappointed in himself for neglecting the signs he did see back then, as if seeing it meant changing it.   
The first time he remembers neglecting a sign was almost two years ago, at Monza, after the qualification had ended, and he met up with him shortly by accident in the paddocks. Both unhappy with their results they tried to encourage each other. Pierre had said: “I got your time read by my engineer and I can’t believe it. How can you not feel satisfied with 2nd place?”   
  
“No, that must be a joke. I ended up on 18th place. I struggled to find the right balance with my setup all day.” 

Pierre had looked at him as though he’d wanted to hug and comfort him, maybe kiss him, but they couldn’t show anything more than friendly affection in public. Trapped in the eyes of two eager photographers, there they were, on the edge of falling into each other and throw their secret to the lions. They couldn’t.   
  
“I think you’re messing with me,” Pierre replied with a smirk that shipped him a sense of it being the opposite. Pierre is messing with him. 

“No, I’m not.”   
  
“Yes, you are.”   
  
“No.”   
  
“You are.”   
  
This wave of contradiction was unfamiliar. He took notice and brushed it under a mental carpet. “Pierre... Check the results on your phone. I’m not joking.”   
  
Pierre’s eyes glistened suddenly with frustration and he had raised his voice at him. “What the fuck don't you understand? I’m telling you the truth!”   
  
Even though it didn’t make sense anymore, despite in bafflement, Charles had shaken his head, told him he needed to hurry off to a debrief and had given him a light finger-squeeze just as he walked by. He didn’t try to understand it, just left him standing in that pool of turbulence on his own. At once as he sat down by the conference table inside Sauber’s motorhome, cluttered with staffs’ laptops, pens, coffee mugs, energy drinks and papers, his brain tuned out anything that had no relation to his career. He suspected nothing. He went on with his day. So did Pierre as well. When they shared bed that night everything was hot, satisfying and sexy. Normal.   
No one saw the enemy on the hill.   
No one could hear the sad violin playing in the background, that Pierre’s last song was already whispering out in the air around them. But how were they supposed to hear it when their own songs of champions and glory were all on max volume and Pierre Gasly was still a bright smile at the end of the day?   
For as long as Pierre showed up when he was supposed to, got the results his team asked for, could be in front of a camera and socialize with others normally, his illness stayed completely under the radar. Then, after eight months of gradually getting worse at driving and keeping his head down, people started to confront him and his team, and Pierre got very upset and defensive every time it happened, but his usual mature way of arguing was changing too.   
“No, I didn’t do it!”   
Yes, yes.   
No, no!   
You showed him facts and he would leave as he yelled: “This is unacceptable!”   
Suddenly he was the guy losing grip with reality, who could randomly ask others for the closest bus stop in the pit lane and people laughed behind his back, some directly at his face. This is the last week of Pierre’s F1 career as Charles recalls it: Pierre pacing and being restless for hours the days before leaving for USA, ending up crying instead of eating his meals. Inexplicably rougher during sex. Unexplained moments of confusion during sex. The crying when he was supposed to go somewhere and didn’t want to leave whatever room he was currently inside. Pierre’s hand seeking to hold his during the press conference on Wednesday right on the table and pulling his hand away, Charles set off a panic attack in his partner that went viral for weeks. The flood of tears wetting his neck and the feel of Pierre’s whole body trembling as he held him, both on the ground outside of Toro Rosso’s hospitality, an indistinctive number of onlookers and one camera flashing, three hours away from the race. The unmistakable skeptical look from Brendon Hartley when he found them like that on his way inside gives him a light stomach ache even now. And Pierre was completely aboulic, a doll to toss to whoever he wanted.  
Charles could have left him in Brendon’s care that moment and Pierre hadn’t argued.  
Could have left him there on the ground like a lamb for the lions to play with.  
It was as though Pierre didn’t understand what was happening. He was silent when they helped him inside Toro Rosso’s building. Couldn’t decide yes or no to anything. He more than likely wanted to protest many times, but couldn’t find the words. Silently he decided nothing and his team-principal decided everything. They took Pierre to see a doctor on site, and another doctor further away, and eventually he had ended up inside of a thundering MRI scan. During his journey through bleak hospital passages, Charles day had gone from worse to a complete downfall. He got hit from behind on the opening lap by Romain Grosjean. Thousands of carbon pieces darting by his view and he spun out. They couldn't fix the damages. He stayed out for as long as machinery moved him forward, but his mind went backwards and black on white he realized the hero in him could be an impostor. The song of glory faded and he retired from the race barely with any fight left in him. A long sigh, head down, he tried to figure it all out and stayed glued to his laptop with a coffee addicted engineer by his side halfway through the night.   
Hold on, go slow. Lights out, let go. Breathe out, then in. 

Far into the evening five days later Pierre had buzzed on Charles apartment in Monte-Carlo, finally showing a sign of life. Pierre wore his favorite sweater, the black one with holes in it and had stumbled clumsily on the threshold coming inside. His hair was a mess, his eyes red and unfocused. It was obvious he had cried. 

“There you are.” Charles had said.   
  
Pierre touched his hand. “And there you are,” he replied wistfully, “how are you?”   
  
“Good. I have been thinking of you. Wanna tell me what's been going on?”  
  
Pierre broke into quiet tears. “I have no idea.”   
  
“Me neither, so that is perfect.” Charles reached out and pulled Pierre to him. He embraced him in a close hug.  
  
Pierre exhaled firmly and continued to breath very heavily for some time. “Sorry,” he sniffed suddenly. “Sorry, sorry, sorry! I can’t help it! So fucking sorry!” At the same time, he pressed himself harder against Charles as if he was afraid that he’d let go of him. So terrifying with that unstoppable loss of control. “Sorry! Please, I’m sorry!”   
  
Above the dark armchair on the opposite wall, the young lady in the painting stared sorrowfully down on them. Her blue-green eyes painted in oil shimmered faintly in the dim, ample, stagnant.   
When Pierre had calmed down, when the crying had hushed, they stayed embraced in each other’s arms for a while until Pierre had wanted to lie down with him on Charles’s bed.   
  
“Do you want to watch a movie or something?” Charles grabbed his iPad from the side table as he crawled up on the bed next to him.   
  
Pierre pursed his lips. His eyes were watering again. “My brain is going blind.”   
  
Charles didn’t dare to ask what it meant. He saw the word ‘dementia’ glow to life and put it out, thinking it had to be something less severe. Something they could fix. A depression.  
  
Pierre put his face against his, cuddled closer and closer. “I know we can’t make this work, but I love you,” he whispered almost without a voice as he let it all fall into an abyss. Because sooner or later everything falls.   
  
  
  
A gust of wind hurls against the two windows inside the kitchen where Charles sits, one that sounds arctic and harsh, makes him shiver in his warm sweater and pull his elbows closer to himself for protection. Spread out on the table before him is his mother's collection of old photos and cutouts from magazines of him and Pierre. Innocent, dreamy smiling faces. Everything he sees in these photos is distasteful. Gun-blasts of pain and loss.   
A verse out of one of his favorite songs comes to his mind and he hears it play inside his head:   
So much to see, so much to live for   
Questions to answer, places to go   
So much to be, so much to care for   
Deep down inside I think you know   
You are free   
Come back to me!   
Charles snaps the scissor blades together, cutting through the thin paper and watches his sweet smiling ten-year old self land on the table. He picks it up and beheads that boy. He feels free when he does it, when the scissors snaps and his childhood-self disappears from frozen moments he’d shared with Pierre for fifteen years. Some photos have Jules in them, and Anthoine. Two friends of theirs waiting for Pierre to join them by the gates of heaven. He removes only himself. Little Charles at the beach, little Charles in a go-kart, little Charles holding little Pierre’s hand on a podium. Snip, snip. Then he beheads them and feels peaceful.   
He gave Pierre all he could.   
Next, he picks up a magazine cutout from three years ago with him, Pierre and Esteban Ocon in it and in that very moment a door slams shut. That’s Pierre and no one else. Pierre who should be asleep and not wander around is wandering around again.   
  
“Pierre!” Charles must call his name; he must make himself known so he can find him. “I’m in the kitchen!”   
  
In a colorless stale world without sound is the thuds of Pierre’s bare feet the only he can hear as he approaches at a slow pace. Time to get everything back inside the envelope. It always ends in tears and confusion when Pierre is confronted with old pictures of ghosts and his past. The moonlight shines like a search light for Charles, splashing down its white-silver glow onto the pieces of ruined memories, bathing them, illuminating them. He picks them up quickly and stuffs them into the gap of the envelope and prepares himself mentally to deal with his boyfriend’s reason to be wandering again. Pierre’s scrawny and dark silhouette moves inside just as Charles decides to put the envelope onto the chair next to him. Out of sight, out of mind.   
  
Pierre stops right where the moonlight draws a line on the oak flooring, hesitating as if wondering if he can or should or wants to let that strange light pour over him. “It seems like... I was trying to figure out.... where my shoes are,” he says confused in his husky sleep-deprived voice and turns and pulls open a drawer with cutlery inside. It rattles loudly.   
Why does he always go for that one first? 

“I think you were trying to figure out where I was,” Charles says calmly, knowing he is right about that. Pierre finds no answer inside his puzzled mind to address his own whereabouts. And this is what it is. A circus where the showman isn't great anymore and the magnificent performers are dropping out, ruining what used to be a spectacular show and now people only come to watch because hope and longing and remorse will be up their throats otherwise.   
But only Charles is watching now. He is on the front row, showering in moonlight, always meant to be here from the beginning. This seat was reserved for him the day he was born.   
Pierre is searching through a cabinet with dry goods inside, uncertain and fumbly. Try the hallway; look for your shoes there. Charles stays silent. Tiresome discussions leading nowhere in the nights is no longer a thing. He gets out of his chair, leaves it as it is and walks over to his boyfriend. “I'm going back to bed. Wanna join me?”   
  
Pierre retreats from the cabinet and looks back at him with a precious smile, a jar of peanut butter sits comfortably between his arm and his chest. “What are we gonna do? Have sex?”  
  
That's not surprising, that's endearing. “Well, aren’t you feeling too tired for that?” Charles asks, feeling too tired to jerk himself off even.   
  
“I don't know. Does my ex know what you’re wearing?” Pierre points with his free hand at Charles's white soft trousers. 

“No. You don't think my clothes are sexy enough?”   
  
“You got joggers or whatever are those on your legs.”  
  
“Yeah, I thought it’d be too cold walking around in only underwear. I didn't plan on getting laid this late to be honest.” 

“I’m ok with that. Another thing Charles... hold it for a second...” Pierre hands him the peanut butter, presses it to his chest so he has to grab it. “Can we just... I want to quit racing,” Pierre croaks weakly and suddenly he is in tears. “I don’t want to meet Brendon anymore.”   
  
“You’re not racing anymore Pierre.” Charles isn't taken aback, his heart stings in advance of where this is heading. He must force calmness and softness out of himself, puts the jar on a countertop and pulls Pierre to him, like a child he can't turn away from and leave crying in the dark. “You don't have to worry about Brendon.”  
  
“But I don’t want him to feel like I’m his friend because I’ll soon be dead.”   
  
“You’re not dying,” Charles says convincingly, pulling back and looks directly into his ashen eyes glistening in the faint moon-and starlight.   
  
Pierre wipes his face with his hands. “I am. They said three months.”   
  
“Who said that?” Some character in a dream, Charles suggest to himself.  
  
“I don’t know.”   
  
Pierre forgot. Charles has to wrap this up and try take him with him back to bed. 

“You’re not dying, Pierre,” he tells him yet again and takes his hand before he slowly leads him away from the distractions and everything that is his kitchen. “I will let you know if something like that was said by the doctor. You don’t have to wonder about that. We’re always honest with you and the doctor always has been too.”   
  
Pierre goes silent. His hand his limp in Charles’s and without much enthusiasm he comes along. Perhaps he is trying to protest but can’t remember what the reason behind it is anymore. The road is unforgiving and clouded. Thoughts that wants to be heard doesn’t get to be heard. Pierre is drifting. Stars and planets are calling him billion and billion years away from Charles.   
  
When they enter Charles’s dark bedroom, the first to happen is Pierre heading over to the thick drapes covering the big window. Some nights he can stand there forever and wonder how they work. Are they a door? Are they a part of the wall? He can’t understand. Charles pulls his trousers off and his sweater, tosses them onto the armchair near the closet door and then goes to fetch Pierre away, leading him over to the bed and Pierre repeats that he knows; he knows how to walk and how to use a bed. Charles is being stupid.   
  
“Sorry,” Charles whispers. He takes the other side of the bed, crawls under the thick and soft duvet and lies down, facing away from Pierre. The sturdy mattress bends under Pierre’s weight when he sinks down on it, as if he still carried the mass of his athletic body. It bends and it sinks down closer and closer to Charles’s own little sink hole.   
  
“What do you want for Christmas?” Pierre asks right behind his ear. Then Pierre does something he hasn’t done in months. He wraps his arm around him under the cover and pulls him closer, snugging his cheek against his neck. His bony frame prods into Charles’s back. Thinking of how much weight Pierre has lost triggers a tiny hatch to let some burn and pain out. Charles sighs and makes a wish for himself: I want another outcome. I wish Pierre’s illness could leave us alone. To Pierre he whispers: “Your autograph tattooed on my ass.”   
  
Pierre muffles a laugh against his skin. “Don’t tell your mother.”   
  
“I’d never do that to us.” Charles closes his eyes and decides this is where he drops out, fades out, goes to dreamland. Still huddled and cuddled, things go weightless and he doesn’t mind where he lands as long as Pierre is beside him.   
  
Sometime later the weightlessness wears off and he becomes a mountain falling through the universe, and he takes the plunge with a twitch in his right leg and prays his eyelids up with a yawn. Charles doesn't know what it is that stirred him awake. If it's the sun peeking between the gap of their dark curtains or if his brain is just done recharging.   
Coffee is the first thing he yearns for, then he yearns for Pierre, suddenly a warm shower too. He makes a mental to-do-list as he throws his arm out that touches down on an empty spot next to him, he understands Pierre isn’t there but he turns a look at his side either way. Pierre is truly gone. He listens if he can hear him. How many mornings had he not lied here wondering what the hell his boyfriend is up to? Most of the time he can hear him wander. Light thuds on rough oak flooring, going here, going there. Cabinets that opens and shuts. But he listens only to silence. It feels strange and he checks the time on his wrist watch.   
It’s 10:02 in the morning.   
Charles buries his face in his hands. They missed the event. He thinks of driving Pierre to the ice-skating ring instead just to make some good memories together.   
Pierre is going back home to France in the evening to be with his family, and celebrate Christmas without him. And Charles stays here to be with his own family. How it’s always been thanks to never having the guts to come out as a couple.   
No famous racing driver ever does that in real life. It only happens in movies or in books. Charles suddenly wished they were all characters in a romantic movie and Pierre wasn’t sick. He imagines he didn’t pull away his hand at that press conference two years ago. Pierre would instead take his hand and give him a faint smile, communicating an agreement through a long stare before announcing to everyone that they were a couple. Then everyone applauds, even Kimi.   
Charles’s cheeks heat up at his own imaginary fairy tale and he wants to tell Pierre about it. He knows he will have a laugh at it for sure. He gets out of bed and begins his morning by picking out black jeans and a casual blue shirt for himself.   
  
“Pierre!” He calls out as he buttons his jeans. Since Pierre doesn’t answer or makes any noises, a worry is slowly spreading inside of him. He hurries through the hall and peeks into every room he passes.   
Nothing   
Not a sign.   
Fucking shit.   
Once he ends up in the foyer his heart goes silent. The door stands halfway open. How long has it been like that? Did Pierre really leave his apartment? He quickly checks the shoe rack. Pierre’s splashed Nike's are gone. Gone is his winter jacket too.   
Charles hurries back to his bedroom to fetch his phone. He calls Pierre on his way to the kitchen, drawn there by a buzzing and a catchy tune. Coming inside he sees it. Pierre's phone sounding and vibrating on the dining table. Pierre you sweet, sweet idiot!   
This is bad.  
Charles steps up to the windows. The winter has spilled a layer of fresh snow on top of old layers during the night. A neighbor is brushing off a white layer on his car down on the street with a large toothbrush-looking device. There are footprints going in all directions. Charles wonders if Pierre maybe went to visit Daniel Ricciardo because he asked about it yesterday, but Daniel is in Australia so no one will answer and open for Pierre over there. And Pierre's navigation system is broken.   
Charles steers his steps to the foyer where he quickly slips into a pair of winter boots and a dark gray winter coat. Instinctively he checks his pockets. Home keys, car keys, AirPods, card case and sunglasses.   
He writes a note to Pierre that tells him to wait by the door until he returns. In case of. Just in case. You never know. He puts it up on the door with clear tape before he locks and leaves to look for him. 

* * *

I'm thankful to whoever read this very personal work of fiction of mine.  
  


  



End file.
